A bumped integrated circuit (bumped IC) which carries a solder pad arrangement on the top surface (to be conventionally wire-bonded) is turned upside down, (i.e. flipped), allowing direct coupling between the pads and matching contacts directly on a substrate. This use of solder bumps or pads on the underside of the chip is well known in the art. The flip-chip is then aligned to the substrate and all connections are made simultaneously by reflowing the solder. Due to the presence of the solder bumps, gaps exist between the substrate and the bottom surface of the flip-chip or flip-chip chip carrier where the solder bumps are not present.
Hence, to increase mechanical integrity and reliability, a filled polymer between the substrate and the flip-chip bonded IC can be used to fill the gaps. In one known method, a filled polymer is dispensed onto adjacent sides of the bonded flip-chip IC. The liquid polymer then is "sucked into" the gap by capillary action. The duration of flow incurs in an excessively long cycle time of five to twenty minutes. The fillet formed on the two sides on which the polymer is dispensed, is substantially larger than the other two sides. A non-symmetric fillet geometry thus formed produces stress gradients leading to premature failures. This inability to provide a uniform fillet has frustrated attempts to provide flip-chip mounting techniques that are reliable in a mass production environment utilizing in-line automation, repeatable automatic process control, high through-put productions of flip-chips on substrates such as printed circuit (PC) boards, flip-chip multi-chip modules, or carriers to form flip-chip chip carriers, and high productions of flip-chip chip carriers on the PC board, in special applications. Accordingly, a need exists in the art to provide a uniform fillet in a manner that avoids the difficulties of prior infiltration methods.